Question

Scientists have been making discoveries regarding inheritance, and how that information is expressed, for almost 200 years now. Please pick 10 key individuals that have made major contributions to our understanding of the genetic basis of inheritance, and write a short summary connecting these contributions. Once you have your 10 individuals in mind, focus on how the process of science involves building on the discoveries of others

Answer 1

Genetics is a branch of biology which rich deals with Principles of inheritance and its practices.Progeny resembling the parents in morphological and physiological features has attracted the attention of many biologists.Mendel was the first to study this phenomenon systematically.In the 1800s,George Mendel conducted hybridization experiments and discovered the fundamental mechanism by which traits are inherited.Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection lacked a mechanism to explain how traits were inherited.Based on his observations on monohybrid crosses Mendel proposed two general rules to consolidate his understanding of inheritance in monohybrid crosses.Today these rules are called the Principles or Laws of Inheritance:Law of Dominance and Law of Segregation.Mendel's approach of using mathematics to explain biological phenomena was totally new and unacceptable to many of the biologists of his time.In 1900,three scientists de Vries,Correns and von Tschermak independently rediscovered Mendel's results.Also by this time due to advancements in microscopy,scientists were able to carefully observe cell division.By 1902 Walter Sutton and Theodore Boveri noted that the behaviour of chromosome movement to explain Mendel's law.Sutton united the Knowledge of chromosomal seggregation with Mendelian principles and called it the Chromosomal theory of inheritance.Following this synthesis of ideas,experimental verification of the chromosomal theory of inheritance by Thomas Hunt Morgan and his collegues,led to discovering the basis for the variation that sexual reproduction produced.In 1928 Frederick Griffith in a series of experiments with Streptococcus pneumoniae witnessed miraculous transformation in the bacteria.Prior to the work of Oswald Avery,Colin MacLeod and Maclyn Mc Carty (1933-44) the genetic material was thought to be a protein.James Dewey Watson met Crick and discovered their common interest in solving DNA structure resulted in the proposal of the complementary double-helical configuration in 1953.The entire body of molecular biology was a consequent development with major contributions from Watson,Crick,Nirenberg,Khorana,Kornbergs,Benzer,Monod,Brenner,etc.Awareness in the areas of molecular genetics,structural biology and bio informatics have enriched our understanding of the molecular basis of evolution.